Thursday, July 26, 2007

SHF No. 33 - Tropical Paradise

To be honest, when I saw that my fellow Daring Baker and sweet friend, Mary of Alpineberry was hosting this month's Sugar High Friday with the theme of Tropical Paradise, I was kinda bummed. I'm not so much a tropical kinda gal. Show me a dessert menu that has all but one tropical flavored dessert and I can almost 100% guarantee you that I will pick whatever that one lonely non-tropical treat may be.

This doesn't really make good sense as I adore tropical fruits and to a gal from Ohio, The Armpit of the Midwest, that means mangos, papaya, pineapple and coconut. I love them all.. and I'd probably love those fruits deemed tropical that I've never had or heard of. So go figger, eh?

But I really wanted to show support to Mary so I went in search of a tropical-like dessert. What I came up with might not SCREAM tropical, but for me - it was a walk on the wild tropical side. Staring at my fridge, which is jam packed with HUGE zucchini from our garden, I needed to use some up as the next round was ready to be picked. Of course, my first thought was zucchini bread because you can use up a lot of zucchini that way. But zucchini bread isn't exactly a tropical statement, now is it?

Yeah, not so much.

But.. whatsay you add a lil coconut to the mix? Or hell.. be adventurous and add a LOT of coconut to the mix! Still probably not a dessert I'd see on any given menu in say, Hawaii, but for Ohio - holy hell, we're visiting white beaches, palm trees and sipping a fruity beverage complete with lil paper umbrella via my kitchen! Wooo! (Pathetic, I know)

What I simply adore about this bread is that I screwed with the ingredients and it still came out as THE BEST zucchini bread I've ever had. Who knew coconut could jazz up your run of the mill zucchini bread? I originally found this recipe on allrecipes.com and after reading the first 15 or so reviews, I figured I'd give it a shot.

Well as we all know, I'm trying desperately to drop a few 1000 pounds. Okay so mebbe not so "desperately", but I'm really trying to change the way I eat and the way I think about food. So when looking at this recipe I see the ingredients call for 1 c. sugar and 1/2 c. veg oil. I decided to try to lighten that up. I cut the sugar down to 1/4 c. and added 1/2 c. of Equal. I cut the oil down to 1/4 c. and add 1/4 c. of pearsauce. Yes, pearsauce. It's like applesauce only it's made with sausage. HAHAHAHAHAAAA!! No, really it's made with pears. Duh.

Fanfarkintabulous, kids! I also increased the coconut to 3/4 c. and replaced the currants with a mix of raisins, golden raisins, dried cranberries and blueberries (from Trader Joes *swoon*). This loaf of moist and fruity deliciousness is just tropically enough for me to submit it to this month's Sugar High Friday. Thanks for hosting Mary! And I hope your back feels MUCH MUCH BETTER!!

In small pan boil one cup water. Add currants or raisins, and boil for two minutes. Drain.

In mixing bowl beat egg, oil, and sugar. Stir in zucchini and vanilla.

In another bowl, measure flour, baking powder, soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, coconut, walnuts, and currants or raisins. Stir to combine thoroughly. Pour all at once over batter in mixing bowl. Stir to moisten. Turn into greased 9x5x3 inch loaf pan.

Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Turn out on rack. Cool and wrap.

My Notes: At 40 min. my bread was getting pretty brown, so I capped the loaf pan with aluminum foil. At 50 minutes this bread was done, so check often after 40 min. I made another batch and got 12 muffins from it. I baked the muffins for 18 - 20 min. at same temp.

Keep an eye out if you are a zucchini bread fan.. because my garden is chock full of zucchini with no signs of stopping any time soon, I'll be experimenting with different flavors of bread to try and use most of it up. :)

That sounds like an excellent way to use an abundance of zucchini to me! I don't make too many tropical desserts either, but all of those sorbets that were posted a few weeks back (some of which had a hint of the tropics!) sure sounded heavenly, and I always love a good ol' fashioned pineapple upside down cake. Your coconut and zucchini is very creative. :-)

Looks wonderful! If you want to cut down the fat content even further, you could replace the entire oil amount with apple/pearsauce. I've been doing it for years and think breads actually taste better that way than with oil.

Morv - Holy crap! Even in the off season they aren't that expensive here. You've really gotta talk K into moving back here (this time Ohio) so you can get good veggies at good prices AND be near me! xoxo

Susan - Oh man.. you can bet my next batch of this will have pineapple in it now. :D

Alison - Yes! Well no.. Kinda! I don't do eggplant parmesan often - but I do rollatini instead, which I make with both zucchini and eggplant (whichever I have at the time of craving heee!) and they both work really, really well. :D I'll try zucchini next time I feel like eggplant parmesan, thanks! =)

Chris - It's never to late to start loving zucchini. ;)

Vicki - Hi! Actually I wondered how that'd work, so the next batch of just basic zucchini bread was made with all Equal and all pearsauce - it had an excellent flavor (not as sweet as this one) and was very moist. I'm so happy to know that now! =)

Hey Lis, this sounds reallllllllllly good. It brings back memories because I used to have a garden a bejillion years ago and grew zucchini that were about 3 feet long. Well, you know, right? Great idea with the coconut.

I used to make stuffed zucchini and it was fabulous. Can't wait to see what else you come up with.

You do feel special that I'm doing this from my vacation, right? Bwha..